And I looked for the little shabby stuffy court, in which I had so often watched Eldon’s lowering brow, as he doubted over some knotty point. My father had the highest opinion of his intellectual power and legal knowledge. But he did not like him. He used to say that his mind was an instrument of admirable precision, but his soul the soul of a pedlar. I take it Eldon’s quintessential Toryism was obnoxious to my father’s Liberalism. He used to repeat the following “report” of a case in the Court of Chancery:-- “Mr. Leech[A] made a speech; ’Twas learned, terse, and strong. Mr. Hart on the other part, Was neat and glib, but wrong. Mr. Parker made it darker; ’Twas dark enough without! Mr. Cook cited a book; And the Chancellor said, I doubt.” _Una omnes premit nox!_ Of course among the other changes of sixty years language had changed. There had been a change especially in pronunciation, a little before my time. Only very old and old-fashioned people continued in my earliest years to say _Room_ for Rome; _gould_ for gold; _obleege_ for oblige; _Jeames_ for James (one of our chaplains at Winchester, I remember, always used to speak of St. _Jeames_); a beef-_steek_ for a beef-steak; or to pronounce the “a” in danger, stranger, and the like, as it is in “man.” But it is a singular fact, that despite the spread, and supposed improvement of education, the literary--or perhaps it would be better to say the printed--language of the earlier decades of the nineteenth century was much more correct than that of the latter part of it. I constantly find passages in books and newspapers written with the sublimest indifference to all grammatical rules, and all proprieties of construction. A popular writer of fiction says that her hero “rose his head”! And another tells her readers that something happened when “the brunt of the edge had worn off”! There are certain words, such as “idiosyncrasy,” “type,” “momentary,” and many others which I cannot while writing recollect, which are constantly used, not by one writer only, but by many, to express meanings wholly different from those which they really bear. There is another word which is worth mentioning, because the misuse of it is rapidly becoming endemic. I mean the verb trouble; which it seems to me all the world before the birth of the present generation very well knew to be an active not a neuter verb. Now scarcely a day passes without my meeting with such phrases as “he did not trouble,” meaning, trouble himself; “I hope you won’t trouble,” instead of trouble yourself. To old-fashioned ears it seems a detestable vulgarism. But as far as I can gather from observing books that have a greater, and books that have a lesser degree, of success, and from the remarks of the critical journals, a book is in these latter days deemed none the worse, nor is at all less likely to find favour with the public, because it is full of grammatical or linguistic solecisms. Now